DoD News Briefing

Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon,
ASD (PA)

Tuesday, April
1, 1997 - 1:30 p.m.

Mr. Bacon: Good
afternoon.

It's April Fool's
Day, and of course I'm very glad to be with you on this day.

I'd like to start
off with an April Fool's Day question. Everybody knows that April is
the month named after the Greek Goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty
and love. If that's the case, why is the first day "fool's day"? That's
the question.

Q: Women have been
making fools of men for all eternity, right?

A: There's probably
no right answer to that, but we can start with that. Anybody else have
an answer?

Q: Only fools fall
in love.

A: That's certainly
a good answer. Any other answers?

Q: You're not going
to provide us with...

A: No, I don't
have an answer. This is a philosophical question here. This is a do-it-yourself
briefing. You guys come up with the answers, and so far, it's been pretty
short.

Secondly, I want
to demonstrate our technology here. Technology in two ways. First, our
technology to show you new technology on the Internet. That's the second
part. This is GulfLink. As you can tell, GulfLink today is going interactive,
which means that for the first time now, people who log onto GulfLink
to get information about Gulf War Illness programs, for treating it,
researching its causes, and making information available to the public,
can send e-mail messages back and get answers. They may not always get
the answers they want or they think they deserve, but they will get
responses quickly, and as fully as we can give the responses.

So Bryan Whitman
is going to illustrate the program here. There is the form, actually,
that you use for reporting back in on medical conditions. You can actually
make a medical report to the Department of Defense to get included in
the Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program, seek information about
either your medical condition, or to request information about documents
or other types of information that we might be able to provide.

[Laughter]

Bryan has always
lived a charmed life, as you can tell from his address.

We think this will
help us in two ways. First, it will help us get more information from
people; and two, it will help us get information out to people. As you
know, we're still trying to assemble as much information as we can about
certain Gulf War incidents.

There it is, a
demonstration of how it works. Any of you can try this.

Q: I have this
question about April Fool's Day.

A: Send it in and
see what happens. Is it about Aphrodite?

Q: Yes, exactly.

A: Good. I thought
you were going to ask that.

I don't know how
many people, do you know how many people are set up to respond to these
questions?

Voice: We have
seven people replying to all correspondence, whether it be in written
form, whether it's e-mail, and then we have approximately, as of today,
16 operators--telephone operators--that actually phone back, either
calls coming into the hotline, or we'll call back people on e-mails
that come in, also.

A: Seven people
answering mail and e-mail and 16 people dealing with the incident hotline.

Q: So what's the
answer? What's causing the problem?

A: We're hoping
you'll find that out for us.

Let me make one
other announcement.

As you know, today
the B-2 bomber is beginning its initial operational capability. A wing
of B-2s becomes operational today at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
There are, right now, 13 B-2s which have been delivered to the 509th
Bomb Wing at Whiteman. There will be a total of 21 B-2s in operation,
or 21 B- 2s delivered by the year 2000. As you know, this is a stealthy
bomber designed to increase our air dominance. Air dominance is basically
freedom from attack and freedom to attack. As a stealth plane this advances
both those missions -- freedom from attack and freedom to attack.

With that, I'll
take your questions.

Q: Can you give
us the details you have on the crash in Tegucigalpa, the C-130?

A: I do not have
extensive details on that, but let me walk you through what I do have.

A U.S. Air Force
C-130H, Hercules cargo aircraft, crashed at about 9:45 a.m. local time
in Honduras -- that's 10:45 EST. It crashed at the very end of the Tegucigalpa
International Airport. Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras. It was
enroute from Howard Air Force Base in Panama to the base in Honduras
on a routine resupply mission. It was assigned to the Air Reserves 440th
Airlift Wing at General Mitchell International Airport in Wisconsin.

There were ten
people on board. We, so far, have confirmed that three are dead. The
other seven are injured. We will appoint a board to investigate the
accident, as always, and we will also provide additional details as
soon as we get them.

Q: A Reserve aircraft,
Reserve flight?

A: Yes.

Q: From where?

A: This was from
the 440th Airlift Wing at General Mitchell International Airport in
Wisconsin, I assume that's Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Q: The plane was
flying out of Howard. They were on temporary assignment.

A: It was flying
out of Howard. They had been assigned temporarily to Howard, and they
were resupplying either troops or embassy personnel in Tegucigalpa.

Q: It crashed on
approach?

A: Yes. It crashed
on approach at the edge of the runway. I don't believe there were...
So far we have received no reports of collateral damage.

Q: Do we know who
was on the plane? Were they all military personnel?

A: I believe so,
but I don't know that for sure. We'll be checking that. We have not,
I believe, released the names of any people in the crew yet. We'll check
on that. You should stay in touch with DDI on that, or I can also give
you a contact down at Howard Air Force Base if you want to call directly
down there. It would be Captain Mike Murk, and he is at 507-284-5459.

Q: Had there been
any indication the aircraft was in difficulty?

A: We don't have
those details yet. This just happened several hours ago, and the authorities
have been concentrating more on taking care of those who are injured.
As those details become available, we'll get them to you.

Q: Do you know
whether the plane crashed at... Which end of the runway? Was it a missed
approach, or the end of the runway or the beginning of the runway?

A: I believe it
crashed on approach, but I don't have full details of this yet. More
details, I'm sure, will become available in the next few hours.

Q: Just to follow
up on the B-2, the plane has been criticized by some because of its
expense; by others because of the fact that it was originally designed
for a different mission, that it might be a Cold War relic. Can you
assure the U.S. taxpayers that the B-2, that they're getting their money's
worth with the B-2 bomber that now assumes operational capability?

A: I can assure
the U.S. taxpayers that this is the most up-to-date heavy bomber flying
in the world today. It has stealth capability. As you know, it has a
very unique, pioneering shape. It's a flying wing made out of composite
materials. It's designed to be able to evade enemy defenses and to zero
in on its targets. General Fogleman, the Air Force Chief of Staff, has
said that in the past we talked about how many aircraft we needed to
destroy a target. With the B-2, we talk about how many targets we can
destroy with one aircraft. In fact during some recent tests--using the
Joint Direct Attack Munition, the JDAM, which as been cited many times
from this podium as an example of saving money through procurement reform,
and something else called the Global Positioning Satellite Aided Munition,
both very highly accurate, pinpoint bombs--three B-2s destroyed 16 targets
using 16 bombs, so they were able to destroy 16 different targets with
16 bombs. That, I think, illustrates General Fogleman's comment that
we've changed the calculus of warfare with planes that can (1) evade
enemy air defenses; and (2) deliver highly precise modern munitions.

Q: If it's such
a good plane, why doesn't the Pentagon want to buy any more of them?

A: We've said many,
many times that this is a wonderful plane but it's a very expensive
plane. It was built, as you know, it was designed before the end of
the Cold War when we maintained on alert a nuclear bomber, long range
aircraft carrying nuclear bombs. We no longer maintain those planes
on alert any more, on runway alert as we used to.

This is a plane
that has both a conventional and a nuclear mission and will be able
to, I think, give us full spectrum dominance in any type of heavy bombing
that may be required today or in the future. But it is a costly plane.
One of the things we learned when we used the F-117 fighters in Desert
Storm was that when you have a stealthy aircraft that can evade air
defenses, you don't need nearly as many of them as you did conventional
planes. Therefore, the planners felt that we were able to get by with
a far smaller fleet than we would have had to 40 years ago building
heavy bombers. We're doing that. As you know, we only have 50 F-117s,
and that fleet performed brilliantly during the Gulf War.

Q: The B-2 is now
certified to carry nuclear weapons. Is it countable under the START
rules? Does that limit its availability for conventional missions?

A: Sorry, does
it limit its availability?

Q: If it's counted
under START rules...

A: I'm afraid I'm
not an expert on the details of that. We'll get you an answer to that.

Q: I just wanted
to be clear on your answer to my question, and make sure I didn't quote
you out of context. Basically what you're saying about why you don't
want more of them is that while it's a wonderful plane, in your words,
it's very expensive. So is the cost factor why you don't want to buy
any more of these planes?

A: The Air Force
has made the decision that 21 planes will be enough for them to meet
their needs in conjunction with other heavy bombers we already have.
We've got nearly 100 B-1 bombers and we have several hundred B-52 bombers
still in operation. So we have a diverse, heavy bomber force built over
a number of decades, but as you know, the B-52s, some of which are 40
or more years old, are still flying and performing very, very well.
In fact B-52s were used to launch cruise missiles against targets in
Iraq several months ago. So they're still very much in use.

Q: Can B-2s launch
cruise missiles?

A: B-2s can launch
a variety of ordnance. I don't know whether these have been outfitted
to launch cruise missiles.

Q: We have it from
a highly reliable source that these 13 B-2s are now in modification
to have their wings folded and operate from carriers. Could you comment
on that?

A: Since they are
a wing, I think it would be hard to fold the wing. It would be like
folding a butterfly.

Q: The mass suicide
in California has aroused the American public's growing interest once
again in UFOs to the point where some of the public believes that the
government can substantiate their existence--that the government houses
remains of these spacecraft and aliens. Would you address those two
issues, please?

A: Yes. We cannot
substantiate the existence of UFOs, and we are not harboring remains
of UFOs. I can't be more clear about it than that. We cannot substantiate
that they exist and we are not harboring remains.

Q: When citizens
call with sightings of UFOs, where are those calls routed to now?

For 22 years, from
1947 to 1969, the U.S. Air Force investigated reports of UFOs. It was
called Project Blue Book, and that project was headquartered at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. They investigated 12,618 sightings during
that 22-year period, and they reached three conclusions based on those
investigations.

The first was that
no UFO reported, investigated or evaluated by the U.S. Air Force posed
any threat to United States of America national security. That was the
first conclusion they reached.

The second conclusion
they reached was that there was no evidence submitted to the Air Force
or uncovered by the Air Force that sightings called "unidentified" represented
technological developments or principles beyond the range of our scientific
knowledge. In other words, there was nothing outside the realm of our
scientific knowledge, our ability to build aircraft, understand aircraft,
etc.

The third conclusion
they reached was that there was no evidence indicating that sightings
of these so-called UFOs were extraterrestrial vehicles. A vast majority
of those sightings were explained by meteorological phenomena -- lightning,
etc. -- or they were explained by planes in the area, etc.

Of the 12,618 sightings,
virtually all of them were explained. There were, however, 701 "unidentified"
sightings. Those are the ones that I referred to in the second point
I was making, which is, of the sightings identified or categorized as
unidentified. Nothing represented technological developments beyond
the realm of our knowledge.

So many of these
we believe might have just been sketchy reports that couldn't be tracked
down totally; they couldn't be nailed down because we didn't have enough
facts.

Q: So the calls
are routed to where now?

A: Now the calls
are routed to private organizations. There are a number of private organizations
that look into UFOs. You can get these names off the Internet if you
enter UFO you can get names off the Internet. But there's also something
called Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations, which lists associations
by interest or subject matter, and it has a list of UFO-interested organizations,
and people can call those organizations.

You might ask why
did the United States Air Force stop after 22 years investigating? Why
did it stop investigating reports of UFOs? It did so primarily because
it didn't find that there was any threat to the nation's security, and
it didn't find that any of these were extraterrestrial vehicles as claimed
by many of the people who made these calls. It just was not a good way
to use the taxpayers' money.

Q: A question on
the future of NATO command. How high ranking on the agenda of General
Clark is the expansion of NATO?

A: The expansion
of NATO will be one of the major topics on his agenda. He will not get
there probably until July of this year.

As you know, there
will be a summit in Madrid in July where it's anticipated that the leaders
of NATO will announce the countries who will be asked to join NATO.
It will take several years, probably, until they're actually into the
alliance because it requires a unanimous vote by all of the current
NATO members, all 16 members.

General Clark,
or the SACEUR--whether it's General Clark or now General Joulwan--is
intimately involved in making the military side of NATO expansion work.
The decision to expand NATO and whom to invite into NATO will be made
by political leaders, by Presidents and Prime Ministers. That's mainly
a political authority made by elected officials. The military commanders
will make the military side of that work, which is making the military
forces of the new NATO members as interoperable as possible with the
forces of the existing NATO members. Does that answer your question?

Q: There's a piece
in the Washington Times about evidence that Moscow has had an aggressive
underground bunker-building program going on with four separate projects
in and around Moscow, and also a related story about there having been
at least four alerts during the 1990s when Russian nuclear weapons were
placed on a higher-level alert. Can you shed any light on either of
those reports? Is the Pentagon aware of it? Concerned about it?

A: The Russians
are building--and have been for some time- -various underground facilities
in Russia. These were done in the Soviet Union and they're being continued
by Russia today. We also have hardened structures to protect our leaders
in the event of nuclear war, and we also have other ways to protect
our leaders, by moving them, by putting them in the air, etc., from
nuclear attack. So this is something that both the United States and
Russia have done.

Russia is continuing
the program. We do not regard the program as a threat. It is not an
offensive program. It's a program to protect their officials. We don't
understand why they're continuing to do this, but they are.

Q: This doesn't
bother you in light of Russia talking about not having the funds to
go with further reductions of START? Yet they're putting all this money
into that kind of...

A: First of all,
Russia has agreed, President Yeltsin has agreed to bring START II up
before the Duma, so the Duma will have a chance to vote on the START
II Treaty. The Russian leadership, led by President Yeltsin, thinks
that this is an important treaty and it's a necessary precondition to
further arms reductions which both Russia and the United States want.

Secondly, Russia
has been reducing its nuclear arsenal in compliance with the START I
agreement. That takes arsenals down from 10,000 or more nuclear weapons
down to about 6,000 as defined by the START I agreement. They've been
doing that and they've been doing it quite aggressively. Just in recent
weeks they've destroyed 19 submarine launched ballistic missiles, in
the last 7 to 14 days they've destroyed those. So they are moving forward
with their weapons destruction as required under the START I Treaty
and we fully anticipate that they will under the START II Treaty, after
the Duma ratifies it.

Q: You said they
destroyed 19 missiles. Do you mean submarines or missiles?

A: No, they destroyed
19 submarine-launched ballistic missiles in the last week or so.

Q: You don't think
that the resources they're using could be used in a better way?

A: Every country
makes decisions about how to defend itself and how to defend its people
and its leaders. We make those decisions every day and Russia makes
those decisions, and this is how they decided to do it.

As I pointed out,
we do have facilities for protecting military/civilian leaders, for
protecting our national command authority.

Q: Does the United
States discuss this issue with Russia? About maybe these funds would
be better spent elsewhere?

A: First of all,
money that's being spent on digging tunnels is not being spent on developing
new missiles; it's not being spent on developing new offensive capabilities.
I think that's a very important distinction. These are on defensive
measures. We are worried primarily about offensive measures.

As you know, we have
a program--the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program--that is helping
Russia destroy its nuclear arsenals. It helps them cut the wings off bombers;
it helps them dismantle missiles. We provide all of that assistance in
kind to Russia. Not in terms of money. We provide them equipment, we provide
them technological advice, technical assistance, etc. So these are entirely
different programs and it's not, they can't take money from the Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program, also known as Nunn/Lugar, and divert it to other
purposes.

As I said, we're
worried primarily about offensive capability, and we've started a very
aggressive arms reduction regime with Russia to limit their offensive
capability and our offensive capability. In Helsinki, the leaders of
both Russia and the United States made it very clear that they want
to go beyond START II to a START III agreement that will reduce even
further the nuclear arsenals of both countries.

Q: To kind of put
this story in perspective, has the United States or the Pentagon noticed
an accelerated movement in the construction of these bunkers, or is
this something that's been going on for some time?

A: They've been
burrowing away for some time in various underground facilities. They
have always placed a heavy emphasis, going back to Soviet times, on
civil defense and protection, underground protection and other types
of protection. I can recall decades ago Harold Brown, then the Secretary
of Defense, used to talk, there was a big debate during the Carter Administration
about civil defense. The debate went that the Russians were outspending
us by some huge margin on civil defense, and, therefore, we were leaving
ourselves exposed by not spending as much money on civil defense.

Harold Brown said,
"We practice civil defense every Friday afternoon when people leave
cities and drive out into the country. We have ways of disbursing our
populations very, very quickly." The Russians have not paid as much
attention to dispersion as we have, and they've paid more attention
to underground protection.

But I think this
development which has been going on for a long while and is not new,
deflects attention from two more important developments. The first is
the progress that we're making on arms reduction today. The START I
Treaty, as I said, brings it down to about 6,000 countable weapons.
START II which our Senate has ratified and we hope the Duma will ratify
soon, brings the numbers down between 3,000 and 3,500 on each side --
a significant reduction. And START III, as outlined by President Clinton
and President Yeltsin, would bring the arsenals down to between 2,000
and 2,500. So this is a reduction of about 80 percent or will be a reduction
of over 80 percent in arsenals in a 10 to 15 year period. This is an
extraordinary development. That's just one of them, though.

The second is that
both the United States and Russia have agreed to stop targeting their
strategic nuclear weapons at each other. So we no longer have the hair
trigger that we lived with for decades under the Cold War. This, again,
is another important development. It's an effort by both sides to build
stability and confidence in a continuing peaceful environment.

We still maintain
very extensive nuclear forces, as do the Russians. What we're trying
to do is to limit and contain those forces as much as possible.

Q: Do you think
this positive development could come to a halt considering that Russia
might be threatened by possible NATO expansion?

A: No, I don't.
And I don't think President Yeltsin does either. In Helsinki he talked
about moving to START III. I think the Russians understand that NATO
is going to expand and it will expand in a way that's not threatening
to Russia. NATO expansion is not against Russia, it's for stability
in Europe, increased stability in Europe. We've spent a lot of time
talking to Russia about that. We're working hard to find ways to incorporate
Russia into a consulting arrangement that will make them feel part of
rather than outside of security decisions made in Europe. They'll have
a voice, not a veto in these decisions.

So I gather from
what President Yeltsin said that they fully intend and want to go ahead
with further arms reductions, even as NATO expands.

Q: A status report
on the security review of the COSCO/Long Beach lease. There was a story
in the paper the other day that we've now granted COSCO 24- hour notice
to pull into any port that has military significance, which is something
we still don't do for Russia and some of the other former Russian states.
That decision was made, and the initial decision to allow Long Beach
to go ahead last year. Were both of those decisions made without any
Pentagon review of the security threat?

A: The security
review of the COSCO arrangement--and the potential COSCO arrangement
is that the China Ocean Shipping Company which has been operating out
of Long Beach, California since 1981--would expand its operations there
if it reaches an agreement with the Port of Long Beach, and all of these
negotiations are taking place between COSCO and the city, or the Port
of Long Beach, not between the U.S. Government and COSCO or between
the U.S. Navy and COSCO.

COSCO also operates
in a number of other ports, including Baltimore, which of course is
relatively nearby. And it operates out of Los Angeles and Seattle, other
ports in the United States.

The Office of Naval
Intelligence has done a preliminary investigation and has talked to
some people on the Hill about its findings. It has not found--I don't
believe it has found-- national security concerns.

We are continuing
to review this, and the Secretary has not completed work, the Department
has not completed its work on this, but the early reports are that there
were not national security concerns attendant to expanding COSCO's presence
in the United States.

Q: Is this review
being affected at all by the fundraising allegations connecting the
White House and the DNC?

A: No, this is
totally separate from that. As I pointed out, COSCO has operated in
the United States for many years before these allegations came to the
surface. This is a completely separate operation from that.

COSCO is the world's
largest ocean shipping company. It carries goods for the world's largest,
most populous country; a country that has been experiencing economic
boom and doing more and more trading all over the world, including with
the United States. It is the company that brings Chinese goods, one
of the companies that brings Chinese goods to the United States, and
then carries U.S. goods back to [China]. I know that you probably spent
enough time in Southern California to have seen COSCO containers traveling
on trucks or railroad trains. You've probably been seeing this for the
last 10 or 15 years, and I doubt if you've ever worried about our national
security when you've seen a COSCO container.

Q: Has the Department
made its official position yet on the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing merger?
And if not, when will one be forthcoming?

A: It has not made
its position known yet, and I don't know when that decision will be.

Q: The QDR report
is due to Congress six seeks from now. Can you give us an update on
where it is? Have recommendations been made? What's the Secretary's
involvement at this point?

A: The Secretary's
involvement is intense. He has met several times with the Chiefs to
discuss this. He has briefings pretty much on a weekly basis about the
QDR. Right now there has been a draft... He has said from the very beginning
that he wants this to be a strategy driven review, not in response to
budgetary figures, but in response to our view of what our strategy
should be for the next 10, 15, 20 years. And a lot of work right now
has been going into getting that strategy portion worked out.

There are drafts
that have been written, but nothing is final yet. There's still work
being done on the strategy part, and that will probably continue for
another week or so.

In parallel to
that, there are seven groups, as you know, working on various topics.
All of this stuff is being integrated, groups have been--are--looking
at ways that the Pentagon can be run more efficiently, and that some
things can be done for less money. Some things may have to be done more
aggressively than we've done in the past and may cost more money. Those
are the types of choices that will be made in the next month or six
weeks.

Q: The strategy
portions... Is it safe to assume that a week or so from now either the
two MRC strategy will be locked in place or something will replace it?
Is that what you mean by overall strategy?

A: Well, it's more
complex than that. It's broader than just whether we stick with the
two MRC strategy. It really is the strategy that will define the way
we engage with the world. And the way we think we can best shape events
that are of interest to our national well-being. That's what we're looking
at. What types of forces do we need to do that, how best do we do it,
what sort of forward deployments do we need? There are a number of questions
that have to be answered by that.

We, I believe,
will be able to discuss the strategy section of the QDR before the whole
study is completed. Our hope is we'll be able to discuss that some time
in early May before the final document is done. After the strategy part
is complete, then a number of choices will have to be made about how
best to implement that strategy. That work will be done over the next
several weeks.

Q: A Japanese television
network has reported that according to U.S. intelligence reports, there's
been some recent military movements in North Korea. One of the reports
saying that some of our troops have moved to (inaudible). And...

A: Sorry?

Q: ...have moved
to the border region of China; and the other one being some unusual
tank movements in Pyongyang. Can you confirm these reports?

A: There have been...
The winter is usually the most intense training period for the North
Korean military, and they have been carrying out training exercises
recently, some of which were reported by the Senate delegation that's
just come out of North Korea.

That training has
been at somewhat lower tempo than past years, but it has been going
on, and as part of that training there have been movements of troops,
etc., and various types of training flights. I'm not aware that there
have been any unusual movements or anything that has caused us any particular
concern. We do watch movements by the North Korean military very, very
closely. We watch them all the time, and we've very alert to any changes
that could be menacing, but I'm not aware that we have seen anything
like that in the last few weeks.